Call of Duty Black Ops 4 will be a Battle Royale – Is This a Good Idea?

While many of us are winding down summer and thinking about goals for ourselves over the next few months, the gaming community goes through a different transition.  A handful of new titles are being prepared for launch, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.  But the reason that this is interesting, isn’t necessarily because of the game.  Don’t get me wrong, the game is incredible, but this version of the game is intended to become competition for Fortnite Battle Royale.  Is this a good thing? Maybe, maybe not.

On one hand, this brings more competition to the industry.  Just having one (or two) games that do the exact same thing is kind of boring.  At least with Call of Duty, there’s going to be a different spin to it because it’s an existing game.  On the other hand, though, this could put off longtime Call of Duty players. Why?  For the first time, Call of Duty is ditching a campaign and opting to introduce a new Battle Royale mode.

Let’s play this scenario out on both sides, shall we?  If I’m a hardcore Call of Duty fan, will I take kindly to this new game?  It’s possible, but I think that if you’re that hardcore, there’s a chance that you’re not going to really like this version.  Maybe that’s people being stuck in their ways, but traditionally Call of Duty has had some semblance of consistency.  Sure the campaigns themselves might be completely different, but the game itself had a common element.  Further to that, it feels like they’re doing this because they want to compete, and I’m not sure that I like that idea.  Yes, I like competition, but I don’t like when something (like a game) is trying to be something that it isn’t.

The other side to this is that it does bring more competition to the market.  Thus giving more options to people when it comes to this style of game.  The problem with this is that people who are already invested in Fortnite aren’t going to want to give it up to move to a new game.  Which makes you wonder if the developer really thought this one through?  I mean, I’m not saying that the game won’t be fun, or the graphics won’t be amazing, I just wonder if this is a good time to drastically change like this?

Time will tell though.  Activision and Treyarch have confirmed that Blackout (the name of this new game) will be available in beta on September 10, for the PS4.  What we don’t know is when it will become available on other platforms.  At this point, we don’t know a lot about how Blackout will work.  But we do know this – the game can be played in solos, duos, or quads.  Treyarch has built an insanely massive Call of Duty map, which is 1,500 x bigger than Nuketown.  We also know that there will be vehicles within the Black Out mode.  But outside of that, and it’s release date, we don’t have much more information.  Is this a game you would play?  Or do you think that this was a bad idea?